The origin of human language: cognition and communication
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We touched upon this question recently in "Chicken or egg; grammar or language" (1/15/25), where we examined Daniel Everett's thesis as propounded in How Language Began: The Story of Humanity's Greatest Invention. In that volume, Everett argues that language is learned / acquired / developed, not hard-wired in the human brain. He holds that our ancient ancestors, Homo erectus, had the biological and mental equipment for speech 1,500,000 years ago, 10 times earlier than the conventional wisdom that language originated with Homo sapiens 150,000 years ago, and that it was the result of a "language instinct".
Now we come back to the lower date with this new research as presented in:
Shigeru Miyagawa, Rob DeSalle, Vitor Augusto Nóbrega, Remo Nitschke, Mercedes Okumura, Ian Tattersall. Linguistic capacity was present in the Homo sapiens population 135 thousand years ago. Frontiers in Psychology, 2025; 16 DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1503900
The Myagawa, et al. article is summarized here:
When did human language emerge?
A new analysis suggests our language capacity existed at least 135,000 years ago, with language used widely perhaps 35,000 years after that
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Science Daily (March 18, 2025)
Summary:
Humans' unique language capacity was present at least 135,000 years ago, according to a survey of genomic evidence. As such, language might have entered social use 100,000 years ago.
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Our species, Homo sapiens, is about 230,000 years old. Estimates of when language originated vary widely, based on different forms of evidence, from fossils to cultural artifacts. The authors of the new analysis took a different approach. They reasoned that since all human languages likely have a common origin — as the researchers strongly think — the key question is how far back in time regional groups began spreading around the world.
The new paper examines 15 genetic studies of different varieties, published over the past 18 years: Three used data about the inherited Y chromosome, three examined mitochondrial DNA, and nine were whole-genome studies.
All told, the data from these studies suggest an initial regional branching of humans about 135,000 years ago. That is, after the emergence of Homo sapiens, groups of people subsequently moved apart geographically, and some resulting genetic variations have developed, over time, among the different regional subpopulations. The amount of genetic variation shown in the studies allows researchers to estimate the point in time at which Homo sapiens was still one regionally undivided group.
Miyagawa then moves into innovative territory:
Some scholars have proposed that language capacity dates back a couple of million years, based on the physiological characteristics of other primates. But to Miyagawa, the question is not when primates could utter certain sounds; it is when humans had the cognitive ability to develop language as we know it, combining vocabulary and grammar into a system generating an infinite amount of rules-based expression.
"Human language is qualitatively different because there are two things, words and syntax, working together to create this very complex system," Miyagawa says. "No other animal has a parallel structure in their communication system. And that gives us the ability to generate very sophisticated thoughts and to communicate them to others."
This conception of human language origins also holds that humans had the cognitive capacity for language for some period of time before we constructed our first languages.
"Language is both a cognitive system and a communication system," Miyagawa says. "My guess is prior to 135,000 years ago, it did start out as a private cognitive system, but relatively quickly that turned into a communications system."
Here's where archeological evidence is crucial:
So, how can we know when distinctively human language was first used? The archaeological record is invaluable in this regard. Roughly 100,000 years ago, the evidence shows, there was a widespread appearance of symbolic activity, from meaningful markings on objects to the use of fire to produce ochre, a decorative red color.
Like our complex, highly generative language, these symbolic activities are engaged in by people, and no other creatures. As the paper notes, "behaviors compatible with language and the consistent exercise of symbolic thinking are detectable only in the archaeological record of H. sapiens."
Among the co-authors, Tattersall has most prominently propounded the view that language served as a kind of ignition for symbolic thinking and other organized activities.
"Language was the trigger for modern human behavior," Miyagawa says. "Somehow it stimulated human thinking and helped create these kinds of behaviors. If we are right, people were learning from each other [due to language] and encouraging innovations of the types we saw 100,000 years ago."
To be sure, as the authors acknowledge in the paper, other scholars believe there was a more incremental and broad-based development of new activities around 100,000 years ago, involving materials, tools, and social coordination, with language playing a role in this, but not necessarily being the central force.
For me, the most exciting aspect of this paper is that it not only recognizes the role of language in communicating and preserving information, but that it promotes the idea that language stimulates thought.
Often, when I look at animals, even my dearest pets, I say to myself, what is it (Slick / Arnold / Blackie) thinking? Usually I have to admit: nothing.
Selected readings
- "Cognition, culture, … and communication?" (11/11/24)
- "Science, cognitive, rapport, communication, niche" (12/13/14)
- ""Cognitive Fossils" and the Paleo Mindscape" (11/25/21)
- "Canine intonations" (3/21/22)
[Thanks to Ted McClure]
gw said,
March 19, 2025 @ 8:27 pm
For more on the relationship between language (human communication behavior) and "symbolic thought" (both in terms of being able to use arbitrary linguistic sounds to convey specific information, and also in terms of engaging in "symbolic activity" like making ochre), and the idea that these things evolved together and are inherently connected, see the 20th-century philosopher Susanne Langer. I highly recommend her book "Philosophy in a New Key." I believe she is also associated with the theory that language, in its earliest form, originated from ritual songs that became associated with recurring events. I have always liked the poetry of this idea – that we sang before we spoke.
M. Paul Shore said,
March 20, 2025 @ 5:21 am
In the matter of Slick, Arnold, and Blackie, as mentioned in the final paragraph of the original post: The local-news operation of WGBH-FM 89.7, one of Boston's NPR-affiliated "public"-radio stations, just ran a story–dated March 19, 2025–about the Harvard Canine Brains Project (https://sites.harvard.edu/caninebrainsproject/), a story that can be experienced via the following link, either as an audio file or as a transcript: https://www.wgbh.org/news/local/2025-03-19/whats-going-through-our-dogs-brains-harvard-is-on-the-case. The preface to the story makes reference to the 2024 Netflix documentary Inside the Mind of a Dog (see the webpages https://www.netflix.com/title/81681888 and https://www.imdb.com/title/tt32907397/?ref_=ttfc_fc_tt), which apparently gives substantial attention to the HCBP.
One thing that bothers me about the WGBH-FM story is that it reproduces without comment the remark of graduate student Sophie Barton that the "village dogs" she's studying in one study, by which I think she essentially means feral dogs, are "dogs that come from free-ranging populations that have actually been shaped more by artificial selection than natural selection". Did she mean to say the reverse of that? Or was she trying to say that these "village dogs", despite belonging to populations that have gone feral, nevertheless remain, on the whole, more shaped by the artificial selection that's part and parcel of their ancient domesticated ancestral background than by whatever natural selection has occurred during their relatively recent feral history? Some clarification elicited from Ms. Barton would've have been welcome in conjunction with, or in replacement of, her puzzling statement.
Mark Liberman said,
March 20, 2025 @ 6:27 am
@gw: "I have always liked the poetry of this idea – that we sang before we spoke"
This is an idea developed at length by Charles Darwin in the 19th century (and Wilhelm von Humboldt and others). See "Darwin and Deacon on love and language", 2/14/2004, and "Musical protolanguage: Darwin's theory of language evolution revisited", 2/12/2009.
JimG said,
March 20, 2025 @ 7:49 am
Think about interaction with someone who doesn't share your (or any) language. The first word, accompanied with a gesture toward your chest, is a word that identifies you. After you exchange "names", you can get the someone's attention, to indicate location/direction/action. Now you have a basis for stringing together combinations of words.
JimG said,
March 20, 2025 @ 7:58 am
Further to my comment,
Another early word would be related to sensory stimulus that was universally experienced, like heat, cold, or injurious.
Gregory Kusnick said,
March 20, 2025 @ 11:31 am
Paul Shore: Without having listened to either the WGBH article or the Netflix documentary, my guess as to what Barton meant is that feral dogs living in and around human settlements adapt to selection pressures largely created by humans (intentionally or not). Whether you want to call that "natural" or "artificial" selection is to some extent a semantic quibble.
Yves Rehbein said,
March 20, 2025 @ 3:47 pm
> More than any other trait, language defines us as human. [Miyagawa et al.]
That is almost the same categorical mistake remarked on by M. Paul Shore.
Olaf Zimmermann said,
March 21, 2025 @ 4:46 am
Hockett rules OK!
M. Paul Shore said,
March 21, 2025 @ 11:40 am
For the non-initiated, Olaf Zimmermann is referring to the sixteen characteristics claimed by linguist Charles F. Hockett (1916-2000) to be, as a group, diagnostic for human-type language; these are known as Hockett’s Design Features. See https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hockett%27s_design_features.
Philip Taylor said,
March 21, 2025 @ 1:08 pm
MPS — "village dogs" — "Village dogs – also called pariah dogs, free-roaming dogs, and street dogs". Source: https://sites.harvard.edu/caninebrainsproject/village-dog-behavior-study/
Aardvark Cheeselog said,
March 24, 2025 @ 11:21 am
As one whose first real object of literacy is the life sciences, my reaction to OP is to recall the notion of the "Great Leap Forward," the "transition to behavioral modernity," typically dated around 50,000-40,000 BP. I have always wondered if this transition was not a reflection of some fundamental improvements in language: maybe the change from "a private cognitive system… that turned into a communications system."
DDeden said,
March 24, 2025 @ 1:34 pm
All hominoids (apes) have enlarged laryngeal airsacs (LAS)(which prevent hyper-ventilation during hoot-calling, which leads to dizziness and falling out of trees), *except* gibbons (which sing) and humans (who sing and speak).
Hyoid bones (attach to tongue) indicate presence/absence of LAS in hominoids. Homo erectus, neanderthal & sapiens fossil hyoids indicate no LAS, while 'Lucy', Australopithecus afarensis, had LAS, so she was very unlikely to be directly ancestral to humans.
My research into the origin of human language begins with the non-hooting singing hominoids. My particular interest is in exploring the first compound words where sounds are not merely repeated (mama) but have dissimilar sounds (mati), indicating more advanced pronunciation and mental cognition and more sophisticated social communication.
marc verhaegen said,
March 24, 2025 @ 6:01 pm
"How language began" is rather well-known: the combination of hominoid calls (gibbon-like "song") + voluntary breathing-control + airways that can be closed (small mouth, fleshy lips, closed tooth-row, round tongue, descended larynx..) + large brain (DHA & other brain-specific foods), google e.g.
– our paper "Seafood, diving, song and speech" &
– my 2022 book (in Dutch), google "Verhaegen GondwanaTalks English".
Philip Taylor said,
March 25, 2025 @ 6:30 am
« "How language began" is rather well-known » appears to this reader to be rather a sweeping statement, Marc, suggesting as it does that (a) there is one almost universally-accepted theory of how language began, and (b) that other competing theories are unworthy of more than passing consideration. Was it really your intention to portray these views, or have I simply misunderstood your opening phrase ?
Jacob Stewart said,
March 25, 2025 @ 1:27 pm
How would language work as a "private cognitive system"? Through an internal monologue? What about people who don't have those?